One night over dinner last night, our family had one of those magical meals together. Kelly had taken the kids to the farm that day and they were bubbling over with excitement to tell me all about it.
We weren't rushed or harried. It was just us. Together. Enjoying a leisurely meal together and enjoying one another. We laughed a lot. The best parts of each of us was on display for all of us to enjoy. I was reminded not just that I love these little people and my wife, but that I genuinely like them.
It was one of those nights that you wish you could bottle up, take with you, for the stretches when it seems like all you do is correct and discipline and manage and rush around.
Early in our marriage while we lived in Richmond, Kelly and I were fortunate to have some tremendous friends, John and Sara. They were a couple years ahead of us in the marriage department and when they had their son, Mac, we got to learn a good many pre-lessons about parenting.
One night I was commenting about how involved John was in Mac's life. He was telling me about a guy from his office who was talking about how he didn't get much time with his kid, but what he did get was quality time.
"My response to that," John said, " was how do you know?"
It seems that the only way to get quality time is to get quantity time. Last week's magical dinner wasn't planned. It wasn't guaranteed. It just happened. And apart from many, many other nights around the dinner table, some terrible and most just average, we don't have that night.
What is true at home is also true for the spiritual life.
To judge prayer, time in Scripture, time in worship, or church on one experience or to try to pick or create only the "quality" experiences is bound to end up in consumerist failure. The only way we get quality time is by investing quantity time.
And since you can only do this in so many areas of life, the question sits: what, if anything, will you give your quantity time to?
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